Research Outputs (Religious Studies and Arabic)http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4322017-09-26T21:42:51Z2017-09-26T21:42:51ZWill the real Nigantha Nataputta please stand up? Reflections on the Buddha and his contemporariesClasquin-Johnson, Michelhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/231862017-09-23T01:01:00Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZWill the real Nigantha Nataputta please stand up? Reflections on the Buddha and his contemporaries
Clasquin-Johnson, Michel
It is a venerable academic tradition that Mahāvīra, the founder of Jainism known in the Pāli literature as Nigantha Nātaputta , was a somewhat older contemporary of the Buddha. This article describes the role of Nigantha Nātaputta in Buddhist literature and how this identification of Nigantha Nātaputta and Mahávïra has become accepted in both Buddhist and Jain scholarship. The article then proceeds to demonstrate that there are reasons to doubt this identification - while it is not possible to state categorically that they were different people, the evidence for their identicality is quite meagre and there are textual references that show very different people going under the names of these two Indian religious figures. If we cannot simplistically assume that the figure named Nigantha Nátaputta in Buddhist sources was Mahávïra, then this has chronological consequences for Buddhist studies, but even more so in Jain studies.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZWhat do you profess, professor? A few thoughts on professors past, present and futureClasquin-Johnson, Michelhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/222092017-03-31T01:00:43ZWhat do you profess, professor? A few thoughts on professors past, present and future
Clasquin-Johnson, Michel
Inaugural lecture of Professor Michel Clasquin-Johnson, 15 October 2014.
As academics, we are all heirs to the great Socrates' assertion that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what of the professor? There seems to be precious little professorial self-examination going on. What does it mean to be a professor today, not only in the eyes of other professors, but in the eyes of the wider world that pays the professor's salary? What should the professor, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, profess? We may even tread on dangerous territory and ask whether the world of the future will feel the need of such creatures as professors. I shall of course, studiously resist interrogating the present in this regard. I have a decade to go before retirement, after all.
On The Death of the Charismatic Founder Re-Viewing Some Buddhist SourcesClasquin-Johnson, Michelhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/221002017-03-07T01:00:43Z2013-03-01T00:00:00ZOn The Death of the Charismatic Founder Re-Viewing Some Buddhist Sources
Clasquin-Johnson, Michel
Routinization is a term invented by Max Weber to describe events after the death of a charismatic religious leader. It has become widely used in the humanities in a variety of contexts. The death of the historical Buddha produced the first known instance of extreme routinization, in which the charisma of the founder is transmuted into a system of teachings that are themselves invested with authority, quite separate from the charisma of any individual within that tradition. This article examines the Sāmagāmasutta and the Gopaka-Mogallānasutta, two texts from the Majjhima Nikāya. These texts, when read together, show us just how the Buddha prepared the way for the extreme routinization that would take place in the community, and how the early Buddhist monks reacted to this. In the Sāmagāmasutta, the Buddha prepares for the power vacuum after his own death by setting up procedures by which the monks will be able to govern themselves without relying on a single charismatic leader. The Gopaka-Mogallānasutta describes events after the Buddha’s death and indicates that the Buddha’s instructions had been followed faithfully. Taken together, these two obscure texts frame the far more famous Mahāparinibbānasutta and provide it with valuable context. This discussion is followed by a consideration of how Buddhism ended up reverting to more conventional patterns of routinization as it expanded
2013-03-01T00:00:00ZMinister for a day - online ordination and the place of religion in the 21st centuryClasquin-Johnson, Michelhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/220992017-03-07T01:00:41Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZMinister for a day - online ordination and the place of religion in the 21st century
Clasquin-Johnson, Michel
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen the rise of a new phenomenon - online ordination. It can be accepted that much of this burgeoning industry is a financial scam, but is that the whole story? The very existence of online ordination raises questions. Why do people feel the need for a “minister” to officiate at weddings? If they are sufficiently estranged from the religious sphere that no bona fide minister of religion will marry them, and if secular alternatives are readily available, why make use of this service? This article presents an overview and typology of online ordination services and places them in the context of the development of religion in contemporary society, and the development of society itself
2016-01-01T00:00:00Z